Photo: Samuel Graves
Ida Sophia (b. 1989)
Working in sculpture, performance, and video, Ida Sophia’s practice is rooted in autobiographical entry points. Using conceptual materials, ritual and time, she explores themes of regret, longing, forgiveness and the complexity of connection. Ida Sophia’s works employ beauty and sensory elements as a kind of lure, inducing audiences to linger in discomfort, reflection, or revelation in order to elicit physiological and emotional responses. Though secular in intent, her aesthetic draws from religious material culture, creating works that feel both sacred and subversive. Interested in how interpersonal dynamics and unspoken experiences are carried by the body and played out in society, Ida Sophia explores how art can become a site for acknowledging and transforming conditioned experience.
Completing her BVA at Adelaide Central School of Art in 2022, Ida Sophia went on to win the prestigious Ramsay Art Prize in 2023 for her video work Witness (2022). Ida has exhibited both locally and internationally, notably: Dark MOFO MONA Museum (AU 2025), Bardo Projekt Raum (DE 2025), Dragonerareal Super Contemporary Arts Fest Berlin (DE, 2025), Scope BLN (DE 2024/2025),The Port Pirie Regional Gallery (AU 2024), The Art Gallery of South Australia (AU 2023), Adelaide Contemporary Experimental [ACE] (AU 2023), Seventh Gallery (AU 2023), Performance Space Carriageworks (AU 2022), Floating Goose Studios (AU 2021), The Mill (AU 2021), The Venice International Performance Art Week (IT 2020), Æther (BG 2019), ACU Gallery (AU 2019).
In June of 2026, Ida Sophia will perform a 40 day long performance at The Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide titled Patience and Penitentia.
Ida Sophia is an Australian artist currently based between Adelaide and Berlin.